Lost for words in buzz over Mugga-bee

We heard another statement on the crisis in Zimbabwe yesterday. It turns out that ministers are very, very concerned. But there is nothing they can do about it. This point was made at considerable length by Ian McCartney, a Scot who sits for an English seat but who has an accent so thick you could pour flaming whisky on it and serve it up for Burns Night.

He was standing in for his boss, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett. It is absolutely no reflection on Mr McCartney, a junior minister, and in no way designed to make light of the horrors afflicting the people of Zimbabwe, to say that the combination of his powerful brogue, his rage against Mr Mugabe (or "Mugga-bee" as he called him) and the speed with which he downloaded his statement, making a buzzing noise like the sound when your old-fashioned computer "dials up" the internet, that half of what he said was entirely unintelligible.

Now and again it was possible to translate a phrase as it whizzed by. "Veezer bah lust" seemed to mean "visa banned list". "Vunnle chih" was probably vulnerable children, and "footha muzzers" may be further measures. But I have been unable, even using the most sophisticated technology, to match "hue car beefing" up with anything.

I sit near the Hansard reporters, and it was moving to see their bafflement as they whispered to each other, and -nervously adjusted their earpieces.

Mind you, they are hardened professionals, and there is no way that the people who train by transcribing John Prescott are going to give up when they face a mere junior minister. (It also helped that we were later provided with a script of what Mr McCartney was trying to say, translated back into the original English.)

I worked out that he was at one point responding to Mr Mugabe's claim that everything wrong in his country - the 3,000% inflation, the beatings, the collapse of agriculture, the mass starvation - is the fault of the British. This is the kind of demented nonsense spouted by tyrants in a vain attempt to convince their victims, and even to answer it gives it a measure of dignity it does not deserve.

But, as one Tory MP bellowed at the top of his voice, "what are you going to do about it?" The answer to that seems to be:

1. Wait for Mugabe to be overthrown.

2. Send money.

Mr McCartney pointed out that the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai (and I am not even going to try to transcribe how he pronounced that name) had said that if the British government acted alone, "it could be misconstrued as a colonial resuscitation of the same situation".

For that reason, Mr McCartney said, "while expressing our outrage .... we do not do or say anything which will hand a propaganda tool to Robert Mugabe." Though it is possible that some people there might face a temporary colonial resuscitation quite equably if it meant they got food.